


Pull The Pin

by Vesper90



Series: Ending The Cold War [1]
Category: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (Music Video)
Genre: Alice is secret agent's handler, Blink and you'll miss it discussion of a child being molested but not our main characters, I guess lies can lead to healthy relationships, Lies, Love, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, Supervillains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 10:32:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6750355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vesper90/pseuds/Vesper90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betrayal and lies make people do crazy things, but sometimes love is enough to get you past that. Even if you are meant to be enemies. </p><p>I wrote a songfic, for a fandom, based on a music video for a different song.<br/>Basically this is just a little introspection and backstory for how they get to the point of the story in the video. How they met, how our gold nosed villain fell in love with our dancing spy, and why he was planning to kill him. </p><p>Song: The Pin - Goo Goo Dolls (Boxes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Battle Plan Has Left Me Weak and Worn

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Pas de Deux](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5849608) by [icarus_chained](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained). 



> A lot of the stories for this pairing are very funny and I love all of those (especially Pas de Deux, which needs more chapters now!) but I was listening to this song last night and it was like a lightbulb went off that this would make a nice angst filled fic (with a happy ending, don’t worry).
> 
> Also I stole the names Reginald and Michael from icarus_chained because it just fits. The story doesn’t really fit with the rest of Pas de Deux though.
> 
> This has 100% not been edited, so I apologize. Haven't written fanfiction in ages and I have no proofreaders to call anymore.

It felt like he had been dancing around this issue for years, even though he had only started this process a few weeks ago, even though he’d only even consciously considered it for the past five months. Reginald sat at his desk and stared down at the stack of paper, the words “petition for dissolution of marriage” glared up at him from the white page and he sighed as he rubbed at the gold plating that covered his nose and part of his face. 

It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to sign the paperwork or that he didn’t think Margaret would happily sign them too, she had been any happier than he was the past few years, but Reginald hated change in his personal life. It required too much chance. Margaret might not make him happy anymore and she might not be happy either, playing stay at home mother to two children that she never really wanted in the first place. It used to work, he might have even loved her once and she might have once loved him too. 

But all the same, it was a dance that he knew all the steps for, even if he was sick of going through them. A simple box step, boring, but functional. Easy to learn, unsatisfying to dance, but easy to do over and over again.

If he signed those papers he would be stepping into something new, something unsure. A swing dance that had room for a lot of unexpected improvisation, not the least of which was the fact that he had never told Michael he was considering a divorce and frankly he didn’t know what Michael really wanted. Reg could be throwing his safe life (super villain schemes and henchmen aside) away for something he wouldn’t even get.

But even so…Reg was sure that Michael would be worth it, just as he was sure that Michael would still want him. Even with all his scars and his, frankly, absurd job. It wasn’t like Michael had a shortage of those himself. 

If he was wrong then none of it would be worth it anyway. Not after knowing what happiness felt like.

But either way he had to make a decision. He was being pulled in two directions and only one of them was going to leave him happy, rather than exhausted from the constant battle. 

Reg laughed at that thought. He was a villain (or so they said anyway, really could he be blamed for the fact that it was easier to get things done the illegal way) and the most exhausting battle plan of his life was the fight to go home to his wife at the end of the day. The only thing that made the weary feeling worth it were his children and wasn’t that another issue altogether…he had never really spoken to Michael about how he felt about children, even though he had told him about Susan and Jonathan. 

His hope was that once Margaret was out of their lives that he and Michael could have a family together with the two children, but if Michael didn’t want that sort of life…

Reg groaned and rubbed at his faceplate again with his right hand, trying to relieve the headache that was building and pushing its way out from where the metal connected to his flesh and cartilage. The pen in his left hand tapped out a frantic jitterbug on the wooden desktop. 

In the middle of his contemplations there was a knock at the door.

“Enter!” 

The door opened and the head of his intelligence division was standing in the opening.

“Sir, I have some urgent information for you!”

“Very well, come in. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this anyway.” Reg threw his pen down onto the desk and swept the stack of papers into the folder they had come in. He might be exceptionally friendly with his employees (especially compared to most other bosses in this field) but he didn’t really need to air his marital problems to them, even if David already knew about Michael. It was bad enough that his legal counsel, Marilyn, knew about the paperwork.

David walked into the office and stood in front of Reginald’s desk, looking rather unsure of himself.

“Oh sit down, I’m not going to stare up at you this entire conversation.”

“Yes, sir…” he sat down on one of the chairs that sat in front of the desk, but just barely, as if expecting to have to run out of the room at any moment. 

“Now what do you have for me? Is it MI6 again? They’ve been poking their nose in ever since we made off with that Iradiom for the quote, unquote ‘death ray’ they’re sure I’m building.” He was building one, but that wasn’t the point. MI6 shouldn’t just assume these things. 

“No, no, it’s not MI6…” David looked extremely uncomfortable and Reginald felt a heavy weight settle in his stomach, whatever the news was it could not be good.

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s just…well…” David stumbled over his words, then pulled out an audio recorder. “It’s probably better if you just listen to it. We didn’t get much before they scrambled the line, but…look, I want to apologize in advance, I know you said to not put any surveillance on him and I honestly hoped you were right about him, but I couldn’t just not do my due diligence could I? I mean I’m the head of intelligence and…” David cut himself off and slid the recorder across the desk.

Reginald felt like he was going to throw up, but he reached for it anyway and pressed play.

The voice was one he recognized very well from countless days spent in each others company over the last 6 months.

“This is Agent A-26, reporting in from my infiltration mission…” 

It felt like that heavy weight was a grenade and someone had just pulled the pin.

____

[Somewhere across town in a hotel]

Agent Michael White was sitting on the hotel bed, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he worked to close a cufflink.

“This is Agent A-26, reporting in from my infiltration mission…yes I know this isn’t a secure line. Look…no I’m not going to call back on a secure line, I don’t have anything to say that needs securing! Just let me talk to my handler…yes, yes, my access code is ZF2265-Alpha..thank you.”

While waited to be connected he fit the other cufflink and straightened the shirt he was wearing. It was a little big on him, but he didn’t have time to order a new one so this would just have to do. It wasn’t as if Reginald had ever particularly cared what Michael wore…he just wanted this to be special.

Tonight was either going to go extremely well or end in death and dismemberment…most likely Michael’s own. Might as well look nice either way.

“Agent A-26?…Agent White?…Michael!” Michael realized he had drifted off and immediately turned his attention back to the phone and the woman calling his name. 

“Yes, I’m here.”

“All right, then my first question is why the hell are you calling from an unsecured line in your hotel room? This isn’t even slightly protocol.”

Michael exhaled a distressed breath that could have possibly been laughter.

“Oh I highly doubt there’s any protocol for this Alice.”

“And yep, there you go, using my name on an unsecured line. Thanks so much Michael.”

“Alice isn’t your real name and you know it and the line’s been scrambled by now, secure or not.” 

She chuckled. “True enough, what kind of trouble have you gotten into now?”

“No, I’m not in trouble at all…”

“Sure, that’s why you’re calling at one in the afternoon, just to chat.”

“No really, I’m not in any trouble, I…I’m calling to put in my resignation, Alice.” There was a long silence from the other end of the phone before she responded. 

“What? No, I couldn’t have heard that right. Why in the world would you resign? You love this job!” 

“I just…look I can’t go into it on here. Maybe I’ll tell you the whole story some time, but I just can’t do this anymore. I’ve done a lot of good here, but I’ve done a lot of bad too and you know that’s true. I used to love this job, but for a long time it’s been eating at me, you know that.”

“I do, but…resignation?” Alice sounded upset.

“I can’t keep this up, bending my morals little by little for missions that I’m not even sure are right anymore. I don’t want to do this for so long that it gets too late for me to change. This isn’t what I want anymore.”

“All right, just…” Alice trailed off, then spoke again. “I’ll put in the paperwork, but are you sure you want to do this now? You won’t have transport home or backup or anything. We could wait until you get back to the states.”

“I don’t need to. I have some things to finish up here anyway.”

“You know it won’t be easy Michael, you know too much…they aren’t just going to let you resign and go live your life.”

“Don’t worry about that Alice, I’ve got it covered.”

“All right…well, I’ll see you…when I see you.” 

“Goodbye, Alice.” The phone disconnected and he placed it back in on the bedside table. He stood up to look in the mirror, but as he was straightening his shirt something else caught his eye. 

He was smiling. 

That had happened a lot in the last few months, but before that it had been a long time since it had happened unforced. 

Oh, he had smiled often, but it was all trained charm. He plastered on the fake smile, forcing it to reach his eyes through intense practice, swallowed martinis and champagne and did his damn job. But 6 months ago he’d received a mission briefing to head to this small European country, right on the cusp of the newly freed Soviet Bloc to infiltrate the criminal organization of a man they knew as the Sphinx. 

It had seemed like an impossible mission. They had already lost two agents to the task in the last 2 years, but for some reason his number was up. Alice hadn’t known, but he knew it was a suicide mission from the start. He’d lost favor with someone upstairs and now he was paying for it. 

He made initial contact at a party, wearing the same tuxedo he was wearing now (besides the new shirt, that one was ruined, but that came later). 

Sphinx hadn’t been hard to spot. Even with all the ridiculous clothing and statement pieces favored by the kinds of people at this party (Michael was burning one of his most well established aliases as an arms dealer just to get in the door) the scarred face and golden face plate would have been hard to miss, but added to the fact that rather than an ostentatious clothing choice, he looked like he had just come from work. Wearing the same uniform that he wore in all of the few surveillance photos they had of him. 

Michael had pushed his way up to the end of the bar, where Sphinx was sitting and ordered a scotch, neat (not really his taste, but it was part of the cover identity). Between the two of them they were the least garishly dressed at the entire event. 

“God I hate these parties, if I didn’t need to schmooze for new clients I wouldn’t even show up. But sadly my clients keep killing each other…” Michael said, glancing at Sphinx as he said it. He thought he was going to be ignored for a moment, but as his drink arrived Sphinx responded.

“Ever thought about going into a job with a less recyclable clientele?”

“Oh, often, but then there’s always some civil war in Africa or an uprising in the Middle East wanting to buy.”

“And the money is too good to stop?” Sphinx asked, sipping his own drink. Which looked suspiciously like sparkling water, which Michael filed away in his head. 

“Well, yes partly, but frankly it’s nice to not care who wins. Its like Stalingrad, who cares who wins just as long as they kill a lot of each other.”

Sphinx looked surprised at that. “A man of morals here?”

“Morals? I’m an arms dealer, Mr…”

“Sphinx.”

“Ah, I’m an arms dealer Mr. Sphinx. I wouldn’t call that particularly ‘moral.’”

“An arms dealer who enjoys the thought of Soviets and Nazis killing one another, around here that’s as close to morals as you can get Mr…”

And for some reason, at that moment, the name of his cover completely deserted him. Something about Sphinx completely caught him off guard and made him say…

“Michael, my name is Michael.”

Shit.

Somehow he made it work even after screwing up and giving a criminal mastermind, practically a super villain, his real name. It wasn’t like Michael had any family to threaten and his entire purpose here was to raise no suspicion, to try to become friends with Sphinx and infiltrate his organization. As long as he did his job, the name slip wouldn’t matter. 

Of course it hadn’t gone that way. Not even a little bit. 

Oh they became friends, that was certain, but there was this constant pull between them. Michael felt it, he thought Sphinx (“call me Reginald or Reg, but please not where anyone can hear you.”) felt it too. 

The problem for Michael was that he actually liked Reginald. He wasn’t like any of the previous criminals he had taken down. He was kind to his employees, gave them time off, health insurance, maternity and paternity leave, remembered his children’s birthdays, went home at 5 to eat dinner with his family, and stopped to give money to beggars on the street and to pet dogs. 

Worse still, his ideas weren’t ones that Michael could even call evil or immoral. Just…unethical and when it came down to it, the only thing that separated Michael’s own methods from Reginald’s was that Michael was sanctioned by a government to do them. Reg didn’t want to rule the world or kill an entire race of people or even make a bunch of money by buying up all the property east of the San Andreas and then using bombs to start a huge earthquake so he could turn it all into ocean front property or use a giant laser to carve his name on the moon.

Reginald wanted to help people and this way, outside the system, was the only way he knew to do it. 

Michael had held off on making a move, despite the pull, because even though he’d slept with a mission mark a hundred times before…this time it just would have felt wrong. It was based on a lie, not much of one at this point, but still a lie, unfortunately he wasn’t the one to make that first move and, special agent or not, Michael had never had that much self control.

The moment came two months into their friendship. He roared up in a sports car (the one perk to ridiculous arms dealer cover IDs) to the entrance of the current secret base that Reg was working out of and lazily saluted the soldiers inside the front entrance as he walked in. Most of them recognized him and no one ever tried to stop his entrance into the facility. He knew he should have been using that to his advantage, but he kept holding off and telling the upper divisions that he hadn’t gotten enough trust yet to start snooping through files. 

Reginald had just returned from a trip. That morning Michael had been briefed on that fact that Reginald’s trip had resulted in the hospitalization and eventual death of the new prime minister of a nearby country that had only recently reached a semblance of stability, mostly due to the prime minister’s influence, since being freed from the USSR. His bosses had gone into great detail over the fact that this destabilization was most likely done for financial gain by Sphinx, something Michael had trouble believing based on the Sphinx he knew, but he knew it was possible that he could be wrong.

Which was why he was currently casually walking down the hallway, whistling an old jazz tune, on his way to Reginald’s office. 

He opened the door without knocking and threw himself casually down into one of the chairs. 

“I trust your trip was successful?” He asked.

“Oh completely, I got exactly what I went there for.” Reginald said, closing the file he’d been reading and looking up at Michael with a smile.

“Which was….?” Michael let a bit of curiosity color the words.

“Revenge.” 

Michael did a mental double take. That was not what he was expecting. 

“Revenge?” 

“Absolutely, it was a favor for one of my newest recruits. He asked me for a transfer out of Balvradia recently and moved here with his wife and son. Why you might ask? It turns out Mr. Prime Minister, aside from being corrupt on multiple fronts, has a bit of a taste for young boys…particularly those in the age range of my soldier’s son.” Reginald looked as disgusted as Michael felt at those words. So it hadn’t been financially motivated after all. “My only regret is I didn’t know about this before so I could have killed him the last time I was in the country.”

Michael couldn’t quite stay in character after that admission (not that he’d been very good at that for weeks to be perfectly honest) and he found himself getting up and walking around the desk. He put a hand on Reginald’s shoulder and squeezed.

“But what counts is you did do it…” Michael kneeled down to get on Reginald’s level and spoke again, this time in a slightly teasing tone. “You know, you are supposed to be a villain, but everything you do sounds more like you want to be a hero to me.” 

Reginald turned just enough to look him in the eye and something just…clicked. They were in perfect sync, they understood each other perfectly and moments later Michael felt the warm, smooth press of metal against his nose as Reginald kissed him. 

And that was how it began. 

Michael knew Reginald had a wife and children, but he seemed remarkably unconcerned about the affair for someone with such strong apparent morals, but Reginald told him that his wife and he had been not much more than roommates for years. Only together for the children and even that was more on his part than hers, she had never really wanted children at all. 

Laying on the couch in Reginald’s office, Michael kissed him and stroked his back when he talked about the strained relationship. Michael didn’t say anything or try to influence him, but in his mind he was chanting “leave her leave leave her, keep me, I’m already yours” which was just enough of a shock for him to really start thinking about what it was he was doing. He was an agent, Reginald was, to all appearances, a criminal mastermind, a murderer. He couldn’t very well stay here with him. 

For three and a half months he weighed the consequences in his mind, but could never decide how to proceed. He had lied to Reginald from the very beginning. Not about their friendship or his feelings, but the entire basis of their meeting and his identity (aside from the name) was a complete lie. He didn’t know how to stop that, afraid that telling the truth would destroy their relationship…and possibly Michael’s life. Sphinx might love him, Michael thought he did, but he was a villain and he had killed agents before.

It wasn’t until two weeks before that fateful phone call that he made his decision and started working his way toward an exit plan, seconds after his tuxedo shirt was destroyed. 

“Get down!” gunfire had started while they were sitting at another ridiculous party, just like the one he had met Reg at. He went because Reginald begged him to save him from the sheer boredom of attending and because it kept his bosses off his case if he reported the things he heard from various other criminals in attendance. He was still claiming a lack of enough trust from Sphinx to get any real information from him.

He had pushed Reginald to the ground and pulled out his own gun to return fire and quickly the problem was subdued. A few former KGB operatives who had gotten a little too drunk and started talking tearfully about the former glory of the Soviet Union, which had caused a Ukrainian mobster (also quite drunk and very patriotic) to rebut their point with weapons fire. The firefight was short lived and the men were escorted out. 

It wasn’t until all the excitement was over that Michael looked down and saw that Reginald was sitting against the bar, holding his arm, blood seeping out of a bullet wound. Somehow one of the bullets had ricocheted and caught him in the arm. It wasn’t life threatening at all, but from the fear that took hold of Michael it might as well have been. He immediately ripped off his shirt and wrapped it around the wound, putting as much pressure on it as possible. 

“Oh god, Michael, you ruined your shirt.” Reginald was in pain, but it was truly nothing he hadn’t experienced before and he was hardly worried. What did worry him, when he looked up to scold Michael for ruining his own shirt for no reason, was the paper white paleness of Michael’s face. 

“My shirt!? Who cares! You were shot!” 

“It was a ricochet, it barely grazed me, you of all people should know it’s not that serious.”

“But it…it could have been.” Michael leaned against the bar next to Reginald and grabbed onto his uninjured arm. Reginald could hear him whispering, barely loud enough to make out so he leaned closer to hear Michael repeating “it could have been…it could have been…”. 

“I’m fine, I’ll be good as new in a couple of weeks. Its fine!” He wrapped his uninjured arm around Michael. 

And that was when Michael knew he had his answer. He couldn’t lie anymore.

Which was why…

The phone ringing jolted him out of his thoughts and he picked it up.

“This is the front desk, we’re having the valet pull your car up in just a few moments, as you requested.”

“Thank you.” He hung up and grabbed his tuxedo jacket. He was bound to look slightly ridiculous, wearing it out in the middle of the afternoon, but he wanted to make an impression. He carried the jacket out with him, hoping that telling Reginald the truth wouldn’t ruin everything. 

He was going to jump and hope Reg cared enough to pull the pin and open the parachute. Otherwise he was going to crash and burn.


	2. We're Crashing to the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our villain knows that our agent is a spy now, but our agent doesn't know he knows. This could get messy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kinda short, but I just needed to wrap up the story.

Maybe, Michael thought, this would have gone differently if I’d been the one to tell him first. 

Maybe if I’d just come clean after Reg got shot or just bothered to use a damn secured line in the first place or waited until I admitted the truth to call Alice.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. There was no way to know if something he’d done would have made this work out the way he’d wanted. All he knew what that this definitely wasn’t what he’d planned.

It’s not that Michael was in anyway averse to a little bondage with the right partner, but generally he preferred the kind where he wasn’t strapped to a metal table with a laser pointed at his chest and an upset lover (ex-lover?) holding the activation button.

From the moment he got to the base, right on time to meet Reginald, nothing at all had gone right.

Normally when he showed up the soldiers, who after 6 months had finally warmed up to him, didn’t say a word to him. He had expected at least a little joking about the ridiculous fact that he was wearing a tuxedo in the middle of the day, but nothing came. 

Foolishly he ignored that, too caught up in his desperate nervousness over coming clean to Reginald. He moved so quickly down the hallways of the base that he barely had time to see the people he passed by and certainly didn’t notice the hard looks on their faces or the lack of interaction with him. 

He swept into Reg’s office and came to stand in front of the desk. Reg was faced the opposite direction, staring into space, apparently unaware that Michael had even entered the room.

“Reg, love, I need to talk to you about something…it’s serious and you may not like it, but I want you to promise to hear me out.” 

Reg spun the office chair around slowly. Some part of Michael’s brain inappropriately piped in that the turn was one fluffy white cat away from making Reg look like a proper villain, but he smashed that thought quickly. On any other day he might have shared that thought with Reg, but not today. 

Michael walked around the desk to stand in front of Reginald, then kneeled down in front of him, just like the day that Reginald had first kissed him. 

“Reg?” He had yet to respond to Michael’s statement and there was this look in his eyes. Distressed, hopeless. “Are you all right? Did something happen to your kids? Is MI6 about to come bursting in an arrest us all?” 

That got a reaction.

“I don’t know Michael. Are they?” He flung an audio recorder at him. Confused, Michael pressed the button and gasped as he heard his own voice making that damned call to Alice. 

“I can explain, this is what I came to talk to you about today. Reg, I know I lied to you, but I want to stop lying. I came here today to tell you that I l…”

“Don’t!” Reginald interrupted him violently, pushing him away. “Don’t you dare finish that though Michael. God, I don’t even know if that’s your real name.”

“It is, I swear. I never lied about that. I only lied about my background, I’m not an arms dealer, I…” 

“Well obviously.” Reginald cut him off again. “I can’t believe that I believed in you…in this…for even a second.”

“Don’t say that, I never lied about us.” Michael protested, trying to get Reginald to believe him. Soldiers came pouring into the office, grabbing him and holding him down. One of the base doctors approached him with a syringe and moments later he was unconscious. 

___

Waking up, strapped to a metal table was not on Michael’s top 5 list of ways to wake up. He would know, this wasn’t the first time it had happened after all. But there was something much worse about waking up, strapped to a metal table, knowing someone you cared about had put you there and was probably planning to kill you. 

Of course the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the most menacing laser he’d ever seen (and he’d seen a few, lasers seemed to be popular among the criminal mastermind/villain ranks) positioned directly over him. 

He could see the ranks of soldiers standing around the room and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs coming into the room.

Reginald walked to the wall of controls for the laser, not even glancing at him as he passed. He tried to cry out, but couldn’t get a single word out around the lump in his throat. Finally Reginald spoke, turning around to look at him. 

“I knew that whatever this thing between us was, it had to be too good to be true, but I foolishly thought it would be you cheating on me that would ruin it…not finding out you were here to destroy me. I’m sure you’re glad to know you had me fooled so well.”

Michael tried to speak again and finally realized that it wasn’t just the lump in his throat stopping the words. He couldn’t speak at all.

“Ah, just noticing your little speech problem? I had Dr. Rama administer a paralytic before you woke up, I really don’t want to hear your excuses or whatever lies you might come up with to persuade me to let you live and I really don’t want to deal with escape attempts.”

Michael shook his head wildly trying to convey some message, he wasn’t even sure what, to his former lover, but Reginald had already walked away. When he came back it was with a remote to active the laser. He held it in his hand, looking at it intensely. He came so close to pressing the button, when the alarm for “quitting time” rang. Michael hoped that his execution was not so important that Reg would swing for overtime. Maybe during the night he could find some way to free himself…

And then do what?

Go back to the life he was trying to leave? 

Dying didn’t hold much allure, but neither did returning to the empty life he’d had before. 

He watched as Reginald sighed, a resigned look on his face, and put the remote down. He walked from the room and Michael could barely hear his voice asking for the night shift to put on extra patrols to ensure no rescue attempts would happen overnight. 

Michael almost felt sorry for them. All that extra work for nothing. No one was going to be mounting a rescue attempt for an ex-spy. Hell, with all the secrets he knew, his bosses were probably hoping he would die and save them all a lot of trouble. 

____

Home. 

Funny word. 

It has so many meanings. One is the place you live, the other is the place your heart is. If you are really very lucky those places might be the same, but Reginald had never been very lucky.

When he left ‘home’ this morning it was with a spring in his step that was only slightly numbed by the fact that he knew that evening would be full of a tough conversation with Margaret when he brought home the divorce papers. Still, he had been hopeful that sooner rather than later, he would be able to have both parts of his home together. His children and Michael, all in one place. 

But this afternoon that hope had all come crashing to the ground. 

Margaret could tell something was wrong, but she never asked. She didn’t really want to know. He ate dinner, but couldn’t tell you what it was. He read Susan and Jonathan a story, but couldn’t tell you the title, and then followed Margaret to bed. 

For just a second it looked like she was going to ask him a question about what was bothering him, but then the moment passed. She turned out the light on her side of the bed and lay down with her back to him, just like every night for years. But Reginald hardly noticed, he was so wrapped up in the mess that waited for him back at the lab. 

He thought about Michael, trapped where he was, paralyzed and unable to escape. He thought about all the good times they’d had. He remembered the horror on Michael’s face when he’d been shot. The wound had only finished healing the last time he and Michael had been face to face before this whole thing had blown up. Michael had asked to see and when the healed skin was visible he had touched it so gently and then kissed it. 

Fury filled Reginald’s mind. How could Michael have faked all of that emotion? And why would he do it? He had to know, there was no use waiting until morning. He would never be able to sleep.

___

“What did you have to gain from this charade, Michael, tell me.” That was what woke Michael up. He had been dozing off briefly for the last few hours and testing to see if he could move every time he woke up, with only minimal improvement.

Reg was standing over him, seeming to expect an answer. That was when he felt the pressure of another needle and realized that someone outside his field of vision was injecting him with something and he could finally move again. 

“It..it wasn’t a charade Reg, none of it.”

“None?” 

“All right, some of it was, but none of the important parts.” It was hard to talk, his mouth was so dry and the lingering effects of the paralytic made his tongue feel heavy and hard to move, but he was pushing through. 

“What did you tell your superiors about my organization?”

“Nothing, not a word.”

“I don’t believe you, are you trying to tell me that they left you here for six months on a mission that was going nowhere?”

“Honestly I don’t think they wanted me to come back. It was meant to be a one way mission. You’ve killed every other agent they sent.” Michael couldn’t help the slightly accusatory tone. 

“Why wouldn’t I? I am a villain after all.”

“We both know that’s not true Reg.”

“Stop calling me that. You don’t have the right anymore.” Reginald looked furious. He snatched up the remote from the nearby table again and the laser crackled to life again, but he was still struggling with the decision. He walked away, unable to look Michael in the face when he pressed the button.

“Okay, it’s okay Reg. You can let me live or kill me, I won’t blame you if you do decide to press that button. I betrayed you and lied to you from the very start and I didn’t know how to stop.” Michael was speaking calmly, though inside he was anything but calm. “I just need you to know one thing first, before you do anything else.”

“What?” Reginald’s voice was quiet and cracking around the lump in his throat, finger still poised over the two buttons on the remote. He could release him or kill him so easily.

“That phone call you heard, you only heard the very first part. You don’t know why I was calling…I called to tell them I was resigning. I didn’t want to finish this mission or any mission for them ever again. I…couldn’t bare to keep lying to you. I came here to tell you the truth today…I was just too late to be the first to tell you and now I’ve lost your trust completely. So…go ahead and do whatever it is you want to do Reg.”

A moment passed and then, suddenly, the restraints on the bed released. Michael jumped up and tried to back away as the soldiers closest to him pulled their weapons. 

“Stand down” Reginald’s voice spoke clearly. Michael saw him, facing away from him, shoulder’s hunched. “Michael…just go. Please, just go.”

And Michael started to do just that, but as he reached the edge of the room he stopped and slammed his hand into the concrete. If he left now he would live, but this would all be over. There was no way that he could ever come back if he walked out now, Reg would never trust him again. 

So, instead of running to safety, Michael turned around.

“No.” 

Reginald’s body jerked up at that word and began to turn around. 

“No, I’m not leaving. I refuse.” Michael walked back into the room, opening himself up the line of fire so he could get his point across. “I know I was wrong, I know I screwed this all to hell, but I love you and I’m not leaving. You’ll have to kill me first.” 

By the time that speech was completed Reginald had turned to face Michael and a smile stretched over his face.

“So you’d rather die than leave me?”

“I think coming back in here with a bunch of soldiers pointing guns at me and you with the controls of a death ray locked on to me pretty much proves that, yes.” 

“You really quit?”

“Yes, it wasn’t worth it anymore…it was just a job, you are so much more.” Michael stood completely still, waiting for Reginald to come to a decision. Finally Reginald strode across the room and Michael rushed to meet him, relieved that he hadn’t completely failed. He’d jumped and Reginald had opened the parachute after all, despite the extended and terrifying moment of freefall.

Reginald grabbed Michael’s hands and stared into his eyes and, just like the day they first kissed, they were once again in perfect sync, dancing the same steps to the same song. 

“David,” Reg called out, still holding onto Michael’s hands tightly.

“Yes, Boss?”  
“Send everyone home. Agent White and I have some business to discuss.”

“That’s ‘former Agent White’ if you don’t mind, Reg.” Michael smiled.

“Are you sure about that Boss?” 

“Absolutely, get out of here. We’ll be in my office.” Reg gripped one of Michael’s hands tighter and dragged him away down the hall. 

 

The Pin

I would give what's left of me away  
Twist and turn just to hear you say  
That you still think I'm beautiful  
I'm worth a chance  
Even still today

The battle plan has left me weak and worn  
Into directions I feel like I've been torn  
We used to live without the shame  
We used to love without the blame

We're going up and down  
Hold on  
We're crashing to the ground  
And anytime you kneel  
I'll open up again  
You reach inside of me  
And then you pull the pin  
And then you pull the pin  
Oh, you pull the pin  
And then you pull the pin

We're doing penance for all our petty crimes  
On our knees, oh we're just killing time  
First we bend and then we break  
And I don't wanna be too late to change

Oh, I saw your light when I looked into the mirror  
And then the past began to disappear  
You know my lies were full of fear  
And can you still forgive me, dear

We're going up and down  
Hold on  
We're crashing to the ground  
And any time you kneel  
I open up again  
You reach inside of me  
And then you pull the pin  
And then you pull the pin  
Oh, you pull the pin  
And then you pull the pin

Your words can lift me up or crush me to dust again  
Can't tell if we are flying or falling to the end  
Your words can lift me up or crush me to dust again  
Can't tell if we are flying or falling to the end

We're going up and down  
Hold on  
We're crashing to the ground  
And any time you kneel  
I open up again  
You reach inside of me  
And then you pull the pin  
And then you pull the pin  
Oh, and you pull the pin  
And then you pull the pin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Their will be one or two little shorts in this series after this, but the story is completed. The shorts are just things I wanted to explore about this OTP's future that didn't really fit into the context of this song fic.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this wasn't meant to be two chapters, but it kinda got away from me. I'm working on part two, which actually covers what happens just prior to the video and during/after the video.


End file.
